Variety isn’t the spice of life it used to be

MOST people know Jack Shepherd as an actor, most notably as TV’s “Wycliffe”. But he is also the writer of several plays and that, allied to his general experience, should result in this light drama about the variety halls he grew up loving in Leeds, being an entertaining evening.

And you really do want to warm to the work and its mainly affectionately-drawn characters and rich details — but search vainly for reasons why.

The setting is Leeds Empire in the Fifties, in the last days of variety before TV began to carry out its death sentence. Working class comedians could peddle the same act up and down the country for a couple of years, and balloon manipulators and paper tearers, singing duos and Portuguese roller-skating families could make a living — just.

The theatre manager’s life was a mixture of administrator and ranch boss, each one desperate to get his cast together on Monday morning for the week’s show, then keep it running for the week.

Shepherd paints a nice, cosily-familiar backstage scene, his characters a mixture of the top-lining star, usually drunk and given to trashing his dressing room, and mediocre bill-padders. But, on the bill this week is a substitute — an up-and-coming recording star; and she has been given top billing.

And that’s where things start to go wrong. Shepherd’s play is about the working class performers whose stardom will die when their audience goes elsewhere, and the newcomers who will ultimately win. The story has humour and lightness, but can’t really be called a comedy.

The trouble is it is all too woolly and slow: Nicky Henson — another actor who has been around a few theatres in his time — directs and faces the problem of building momentum into a play which, too often, deliberately moves at no pace at all so the characters can discuss the nature of their business.

Shepherd himself doesn’t help: as the theatre manager he offers his usual laid-back desperation, rather than the agitated fear we might expect from having a drunken comedian, currently unconscious, expected to top the show in half an hour.

Performances go from average to strong (the latter especially Jim Bywater as comedian Reg), but there’s a strong sense that you could discard some of the characters completely without really noticing.